New Delhi, March 24, 2017: In keeping with the Delhi Election Commission’s order ahead of the municipal polls, officials on Friday started plastering over the words “Aam Aadmi” from Delhi government-run schemes on display, and some even went to the extent of covering Aam Aadmi Party leader and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s face, which was not part of the order.

Ahead of the April 23 municipal elections in the national capital, the Delhi Election Commission directed that the government in the capital remove the words “Aam” from all forms of display of its schemes.

The state poll panel’s order came on the memorandum of opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Vijender Gupta, who had demanded that the words “Aam Aadmi” be removed, as reference to Delhi’s ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).

The commission, through a letter on Tuesday, directed the Delhi Chief Secretary and all the three city municipal commissioners to remove the word “Aam” from all forms of display, including hoardings, banners, name plates, billboards, in Aam Aadmi Mohalla Clinics and Aam Aadmi Bypass Express Service or anywhere within the jurisdiction of the Delhi government.

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However, on Friday, officials while carrying out the directive to cover the word “Aam” with newspaper also plastered over the next word “Aadmi”, on hoardings, billboards and banners of the Delhi government’s flagship Mohalla Clinic scheme across the city.

In the process, the authorities also covered up the photographs of Kejriwal and Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain in several banners and hoardings of Aam Aadmi Mohalla Clinics.

Elections for the North, East and South Delhi Municipal Corporations are scheduled on April 23 and the results will be announced on April 26.

Chicago: The Aam Aadmi Party Convener and Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal has launched a door to door campaign seeking donations for the AAP. According to former overseas co-coordinator of Aam Aadmi Party, Dr. Munish Raizada, this is nothing more than a misleading campaign!

Raizada says that Kejriwal has no moral right to seek donations from common man as he has dismantled financial transparency in AAP by removing donors list from its website. Displaying donors’ list showing real time donations and making the income and expenditure accounts available online were the basis and the promise of the AAP, emphasised Raizada.

Now, after hiding donors’ list and its balance sheets from the public, the AAP cannot claim to be practising alternative politics.

Lack of financial transparency in the Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP prompted a group of NRIs, who once worked to mobilise funds and support for the party, to turn against it. (File photo)

It may be noted that AAP removed the list of donors from its website in June 2016. Moreover, since then AAP has been surrounded with controversies related to donations. AAP had also received Rs 30.67 crore Income Tax notice, last year in November, implying that all is not well with AAP’s accounts, says Raizada.

He further questions Kejriwal, that if AAP has nothing to hide about its accounts and if AAP is honest with its account keeping then why is Kejriwal hiding the donations?

Even the donation policy that was earlier the pride of every AAP volunteer has been done away with. The donation policy on AAP website used to state: “Every single rupee donated to the party will be published on the website immediately along with the details of the donor. Every expense done by the party will also be published on the website.”

But rather than putting the donors’ list in public domain, the party’s corrupt leadership started blaming BJP and I.T. Department for harassing its donors.

Opaque political funding is the fountain head of corruption. Further, Raizada says that if the party cannot be transparent in its political funding, then talking about fighting corruption and graft is a mere rhetoric. He said that the appeals by Chanda Bandh Satyagraha have fallen on deaf ears as far as the party’s

leadership is concerned.

Chanda Bandh Satyagraha makes an appeal that AAP should immediately restore donors’ list on its website and then only seek new donations. Chanda Bandh Satyagraha was started by AAP’s volunteers in 2016, with an appeal to the public not to donate to AAP unless it makes its donation lists open and transparent.